“Clothes off,” he said.
She nodded, releasing him, and pulled her T-shirt off over her head, revealing perky tits just the right size for his hands. No bra. The sight tempted his mouth, but if he started that he might never stop, and she wasn’t near naked enough for that yet. He pulled off her Converse sneakers and socks. Her toenails were unpainted, which didn’t surprise him in the least. She didn’t strike him as having a whole lot of extra time for things like pedicures. But it did something to him, seeing her unpainted toes. It felt intimate, somehow. Like he was seeing something not everyone had the privilege of seeing.
He flicked open the button on her jeans and pulled them down her legs. Plain black cotton underwear, sexy as hell on her, although he didn’t think that was her intention. He grinned, putting it all together. No bra, serviceable underwear. This truly wasn’t a premeditated booty call.
“Is something funny?” she asked, clearly annoyed that he had stopped.
“I’m imagining you at home, in bed, seething because you can’t stop thinking about me. You were in your pajamas, weren’t you? You had to change before you came here.”
“So what?”
“Hm.” He ran his thumb under the seam, tracing the line from her hip bone down the crease between her thigh and that lovely place his dick was aching to be. Her breath hitched in a very gratifying way. “Tell me something. Did you touch yourself? Just a little. Before you realized it wasn’t enough. You needed the real thing.”
“I—” Her cheeks flushed.
“You did!” He was absolutely delighted about that. Too delighted. The image of her touching herself, thinking of him, made his dick so hard it hurt. Enough of that. He had a job to do. “You won’t regret this. You can hate me tomorrow, regret that I exist in the same world as you, but you won’t regret the sex. I’ll give you what you need.”
With that, he hooked her underwear with one finger, tugged them off, and tossed them aside. And then...he looked.
Emma Andrews was naked in his bed.
Her hair fanned out across his pillow like a halo. He didn’t know where to start. With those perfect breasts, tipped by sweetest petal-pink nipples he had ever seen? Or lower, with the golden-brown triangle at the apex of her thighs? Yes, there. His mouth watered.
He put a knee on the bed next to her hip and kissed her, threading his fingers through her silky hair as he pressed his hips against hers, letting her feel his weight and how hard he was. How much he ached for her. He was still fully clothed, except for his shoes, and it drove him nearly insane to feel all that warm, soft skin separated from him by only a layer of fabric. That simple layer of fabric was the only thing keeping his restraint in check, the only thing that kept him from taking her now without foreplay.
For a moment he reconsidered. Was foreplay even necessary right now? They had had years of foreplay, even if they had barely understood it at the time. All those little touches, stolen glances, from the moment he had seen her in a bikini when she was fifteen and realized she wasn’t a child anymore. And then his dick had promptly hardened, reminding him that neither was he. Those eight long years of being invisible to her had only made him hungrier.
But he only had tonight. He was going to do this right, make it last, take her every way he could.
He shifted lower to kiss the alley between her breasts, then lower still to her belly. His lips curved in a smile, remembering how she had used him for a ladder. He had fantasized about this moment, and now that it was a reality, he wasn’t going to waste the opportunity. He kissed her there, swirled the tip of his tongue in the indentation of her navel. She made a sound, a shocked giggle, and he had never felt so proud of himself. Emma wasn’t one to giggle. He lifted his head for a moment and grinned at her.
“Couldn’t resist,” he said.
Her fingers grazed his cheek in an oddly affectionate touch before her hand dropped to her side again. “I don’t want you to resist anything.”
Good. Because he wouldn’t. He couldn’t.
She was panting heavily as he moved farther down, her stomach rising and falling with each labored breath. He paused there, at the most intimate part of her, savoring the moment.
His dick hurt.
His heart hurt.
And there was nowhere else he would rather be.
He made room for his shoulders between her thighs, pressing them wider so he had better access to the heart of her. He slid a finger gently down her center and then pressed deeper. She was wet with desire. For him. Only for him.
He lowered his head and tasted her deeply while continuing to tease her with his fingers. She gasped, her breaths coming in short, hard pants. Then suddenly—and far too soon—she gave a sharp cry, her back arched off the bed, and he felt her internal muscles clench in a rhythmic spasm around his fingers.
She fell back, breasts rising and falling rapidly, muscles limp. He raised his head and pierced her with a long stare.
“I wasn’t finished, Ms. Andrews,” he said sternly, and was pleased when she shivered.
“Sorry. It’s been...it’s been a while.”
“I wasn’t finished,” he repeated.
And lowered his head.
The first touch made her tremble and curl into herself just a little. Her orgasm had left her sensitive. He shifted, keeping his stroke gentle, giving her time to recover. He was a patient man, and for this, for her, he had all the time in the world. She was delicious, better than even his imagination had prepared him for.
He could tell when she was ready for more. Her hips canted, seeking more friction from his mouth. He complied, gripping her more firmly, increasing the pace. She dug her fingers through his hair, holding his head close to her as another orgasm sent her internal muscles pulsing. Pleasure washed through him, more intense than he had ever experienced without an orgasm of his own.
She collapsed, boneless, and slowly he pulled away. God, she looked beautiful there in his bed. Peaceful. She had arrived on his doorstep angry and tense, but now she was sated. All the fight had seemed to drain from her with that first orgasm, and the second had sent her to euphoria.
“Don’t fall asleep,” he begged, shucking his pants and shirt in record time.
“Not asleep,” she murmured. She blinked slowly and then her eyes widened as she took him in. Her gaze raked over him and she smiled. “Mmm.”
He wanted to tell her no, that she couldn’t look at him like that. That if she looked at him like that, he might get ideas that she wanted to keep him. But he liked it too much to tell her to stop. Like everything else with Emma, the pain was more pleasurable than the emptiness of nothing.
He grabbed a condom from the nightstand, ripped the foil packet open, and rolled it over his aching length. He joined her on the bed, pressing her back to the mattress, every inch of her bare skin touching his bare skin. Finally. She parted her legs, making room for him, and his erection settled there against her warm, slick skin.
He stopped, momentarily overwhelmed. He shivered and dropped his forehead to hers, trying to ground himself in the moment. It was all right. There was nothing to fear here.
“Eli,” she whispered. She squeezed his ass, urging him to move.
He didn’t hesitate. He bucked forward, sheathing himself completely in her tight, wet heat. He wanted to go slow, to savor, to stretch this moment out as long as he was able, but he was past all that now. Past restraint. Past patience.
He could feel her release building again. He was familiar with it now, the way her external muscles went taught, the way her hands fluttered as she searched for something to hold on to. He understood the feeling. It was comforting that she, too, was overwhelmed and in need of grounding.
He couldn’t hold back any longer. She shuddered beneath him, nails digging into his back as her internal muscles pulsed around him as she climaxed, pulling him deeper. Blood roared in his ears as the last vestiges of his control snapped completely. He pounded himself into her, conscious only of this need to finis
h. To finally have her, completely. Pleasure burst through him like an explosion, a single word ripped from his throat.
“Emma.”
Chapter Eleven
Home.
It wasn’t so much a word as it was a feeling that engulfed Emma before she was fully conscious. It was the scent of spicy aftershave and generic shampoo, a combination so intensely familiar that her life flashed in a series of hazy, dream-like scenes. Eli spinning her in a circle at the homecoming dance. Eli grabbing her waist, hauling her back when she leaned too far over the safety bar on the Ferris wheel. Eli crawling into bed with her the night her mother died, holding her while a never-ending stream of tears soaked her pillow. Eli, Eli, Eli. His name was a drumbeat matching the rhythm of her heart.
She opened her eyes.
It took a moment of fumbling in the dark for her alarm to realize that she was not in her own house. Something warm brushed against her cheek and the incessant beeping stopped. The mattress shifted as he stood, and then there was the soft sound of bare feet padding across the wood floor. A second later the hall light turned on, the light muted enough that it didn’t hurt. She watched him return to her and ached a little at how beautiful he was. He looked like something Michelangelo had sculpted, but instead of cold marble, he was warm flesh and muscle.
“Hey.” He sat next to her, making her roll toward him slightly when the mattress dipped from his weight. “Are you awake?”
“Yes. What time is it?” She rubbed her eyes.
“Quarter to five.”
She sat up. Perfect. That would give her time to get home, shower, and meet Cesar. “Early day for you?”
He shook his head. “My shift doesn’t start until nine. You said you needed to be up by five.”
She paused in the act of pulling her shirt on over her head and looked at him. “You set your alarm for me?”
“You fell asleep hard and fast after”—he made a vague hand gesture—“so I didn’t want to wake you. I figured it would be better to let you sleep.”
She had told him what time she had to be up? She didn’t remember that, but she wasn’t surprised that he did. Typical Eli. He could always be depended on to do the right thing. Set the alarm so she would be up when she needed to be up. Run for mayor when no one else was interested in the job. It wasn’t anything new with him; he had always been that way, from the day they had met in kindergarten, when she had forgotten her lunch so he had given her half his sandwich and a cookie. Sturdy. Dependable.
Galling.
How could the traits that drew her to him in the first place be the exact same traits that caused their irreparable rift? How had she not known that he would arrest her dad? How—
Well. She hadn’t known. That was all there was to it. She had been distraught when she went to Eli with what she had discovered. Not thinking straight. Shock did that to a person.
She hadn’t known.
She shimmied into her pants, pushing the thoughts down into the dark hole of her mind where they belonged. She wasn’t going to replay it over and over again. What good would that do?
“Thanks,” she said. “For setting the alarm, I mean.”
He regarded her quizzically. “Right. Because that’s what we were talking about. What else would you mean?”
Thank God he wasn’t privy to her inner thoughts. “I don’t know. For the mind-blowing sex, maybe?”
Eli collapsed backward onto the bed, grabbing his chest like the shock had given him a heart attack. “Did you really just say that?”
“Are you saying you didn’t think it was mind-blowing?”
She didn’t think her pride could take that. It wasn’t as though she had never had good sex before. She had. Really good sex, even. But this...this was different. It had been so much more than she was used to. More heat. More intensity. More orgasms. Three, to be precise, which was two more than usual for her.
It had been more than mind-blowing. It had been soul-shattering.
She hadn’t realized that sex could be so...so intimate. That it could be more than two sweaty bodies seeking to give and receive physical pleasure. Well, she had known. She understood, in a very mechanical sort of way, that sex was, by definition, an intimate act. But she had never felt it in that way before. Had never experienced that kind of intimacy for herself. Until Eli had called her name.
That was the moment when sex had crossed over from being simply more to being too much. Her chest had felt like it might crack in two, and tears had slipped from her eyes before she could stop them. Fortunately, Eli hadn’t seemed to notice.
It had been so raw. So terrifying.
She shook her head, trying to clear the thoughts away. Better not to think about the soul-shattering parts. She would focus on the mind-blowing aspect. The orgasms. The things that felt good. Ignore the scary feelings that had tagged along for the ride.
He still hadn’t answered her question, which was unforgivable. “Well?” she demanded.
“Yes, the sex was mind-blowing.” Eli traced a seam on the white duvet. It was one of those down comforters meant to have a washable cover, but he had left it bare. It was a strange dichotomy, because the sheets were actually very nice. The softest she had ever slept on, in fact. Emma wondered about that, about the decadent sparseness of his entire house. Everything was for the comfort and enjoyment of exactly one person. There wasn’t room for anyone else here.
“We should do it again sometime,” he said.
“Okay.”
They stared at each other.
“All right,” he said slowly. Then he cleared his throat. “Sorry, but what is it, exactly, we’re agreeing to?”
She let out the breath she didn’t know she was holding in a startled laugh. “You’re the one who propositioned me, Eli. So I guess the question is, what, exactly, are you propositioning?”
He shifted, pulling the duvet over his lap. She watched him with avid interest. He was still naked, and until this very moment, he had seemed entirely comfortable with his nakedness.
“You know,” he said vaguely.
Her words from the night before came back to her with acute clarity. Her words...and his response. You know what I want, she had said. If he had, he wouldn’t admit it. I don’t think I do, he had replied. Why don’t you tell me?
Now it appeared their roles were reversed. He was the one with the dark desire that he loathed to give words to, and she was the one who was going to gleefully pull it out of him. Oh, yes, she was. She nearly rubbed her hands together and chortled like an old-timey villain in a black-and-white movie.
It wasn’t hard to guess what he wanted, and why it bothered him so much to admit it. This was straight-and-narrow Eli, after all. The man who followed the law to the letter, even if that meant arresting his best friend’s dad. The man who always buttoned his shirt to the very top, even if it choked him. He had probably never had sex without the requisite three dates first. It must chap his hide to realize he wanted meaningless, commitment-free sex, and with her of all people. To realize he was just as human as everyone else. Just as fallible. Just as needy.
What a goddamn delightful turn of events this was.
“I don’t think I do know what you want, Eli,” she said, enjoying throwing his words back in his face. “Why don’t you tell me?”
He scowled. “You’re enjoying this.”
“Immensely.” She beamed.
The muscle in his jaw twitched, but he remained stubbornly silent.
“Come on,” she said. “If we’re going to do this, we need all our cards on the table. There is too much history between us. Too much bad history. Let’s not set ourselves up for an unnecessary misunderstanding.”
“It wasn’t all bad.”
She blinked, remembering how she had felt waking up in his bed, in his arms. It wasn’t that she had forgotten the bad things. But in that brief, hazy moment, the bad things had been outweighed by all the good that had come before.
“No,” she said softly. “It w
asn’t all bad.”
“But you’re right. We’re already set up as opponents in the mayoral race. A misunderstanding involving sex might cause World War III. Cards on the table, then.”
She waited. When he didn’t follow that statement up with putting his cards on the table, she raised her eyebrows. “Use your words, Eli,” she coaxed. “It’s easy. All you have to say is, Emma, I want no-strings-attached, meaningless sex until one or both of us decides we’re done with it. See? Easy.”
“Right. That’s what I’m asking for.” He made a sound of disgust. “Because that’s what this is, and there’s no sense in pretending it’s something else.”
The anger in his voice took her aback. Was it the meaningless sex that he found distasteful, or the meaningless sex with her? “We don’t have to do this. If you don’t want to. If you have, I don’t know, moral qualms about sleeping with someone you’re not technically even dating.”
“Oh, we’re doing this, all right.”
“Eli—”
He hauled her against him, cutting off her words with a hard, brief kiss. “We’re doing this.”
Her lips tingled. She liked that. It made other parts of her tingle, too. “All right.”
“But I do have strings.”
Of course he did. “All right. Let’s hear it.”
“First, while this is happening with us, we don’t see other people. We’re not dating, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t a relationship, even if it is kind of twisted. I don’t juggle, and I don’t share.”
She blew out a sigh. That was a relief, actually. And not only because the thought of him with someone else made her insides feel like someone had taken a rusty chainsaw to her stomach. She didn’t want to see anyone else, either. Who had time for that?
“We’re on the same page, there. What else?”
“We have an end date: the election. It makes sense, because after that, we won’t have to see each other anymore. If you want out before that...” He paused, looking away. “When you’re done, you tell me. To my face. None of this texting shit. I’ll make it easy on you, don’t worry about that. Just...don’t disappear on me.”
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